


dennis is jealous of chase utley

by golden_geese



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M, TW: Body Image Issues, cannon-typical anti-dee shit, dennis being a bitch, mac and dennis were banging in season 5 and we all know it, mac taking care of dennis, not too fluffy but a little bit of Cute, the world series defense, this one is short and light-hearted, tw: anti-charlie language :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 01:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16985130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_geese/pseuds/golden_geese
Summary: takes place right after the events that led to the world series defense hearing. dennis is banged up; mac takes care of him even. anon request.





	dennis is jealous of chase utley

“Dammit, dude,” Dennis huffs, holding up two handfuls of paper, parked outside Frank and Charlie’s building. “Look at all these goddamn parking tickets.”

“Just make Frank pay them,” Mac says. “We can tell him he has to pay it ‘cause you gave him and Charlie a ride home. Can we go already? I’m fucking starving, bro. I’m so hungry.”

“Yeah, yeah, I am too. Let’s get food. You wanna get food?”

“ _Yes,_ dude.”

“I’ll take care of you. I’ll get you food.” Dennis cringes as he shifts the car into reverse to pull out of the parking spot. “Fuck.”

“Are you okay, man? Should we go to the hospital?”

“No. I’m fine. Let’s get food. What do you want? Pizza? Chinese? Burgers?”

“I don’t care, Den, I’m starving.”

“Burgers it is.” Dennis flicks on his turn signal at the last possible second before making a left turn. He shoves the parking tickets carelessly off his lap, letting them fall to the floor. He’s already thinking of five different ways to get rid of them.

“Your arm looks pretty fucked up, man,” Mac comments a few moments later.

“Yeh. I mean, I kind of landed on it when your friend pushed me in front of that car.” Dennis cringes again.

“ _My_ friend?”

“Well, he’s certainly not my friend anymore. He pushed me in front of a car, Mac.”

“You ran over him and broke both his legs a few years back,” Mac points out.

Dennis scoffs. “And?”

“Doesn’t this make you even?”

“No. I ran over Charlie on accident. He shoved me in front of a car on purpose. And it’s his fault we got trapped in the Ollidy Inn. I never believed there was a tunnel in the first place,” Dennis lies. Looking back, it’s ridiculous-- at the time, it made sense and all, but that’s neither here nor there.

“Okay, man.”

Dennis doesn’t say anything else on the matter, having pulled into the empty drive-through line. He orders their food, not bothering to ask Mac what he wants since it’s always the same double cheeseburger with fries. They get their food(he tries to ignore the stabbing in his chest as he reaches to the window), and he finds a parking spot so they can start eating.

Neither of them says anything for a minute, both scarfing down their food. This isn’t Dennis’ favorite burger place by a long shot-- it was just the closest one, and he was too hungry to really care.

He realizes there’s ketchup on his face. Wipes it off without even bothering to feel embarrassed. Glances toward Mac to see if he noticed-- he didn’t, but lowkey, Dennis doesn’t really care either way. He goes back to stuffing his face.

(Even twenty years of his mom’s judgmental once-overs and all the times he watched her pinch Dee’s minimal arm fat or his chubby middle school cheeks hasn’t managed to make him embarrassed to stuff his face in front of Mac. Everyone else, maybe, but not Mac. Mac is his free pass in a lot of ways.)

“Ugh, dude, this burger is so good,” Mac says, stopping to take a drink of his soda. “This is exactly what I wanted, Den. You always know exactly what I want.”

Dennis looks at Mac with doe eyes, feigning surprise to further stroke his own ego. “Do I?” He asks innocently. “Well, thanks, buddy.”

“Oh, yeah, bro,” Mac says, completely falling for it. “You always know what food sounds good or what movie we should watch. And like, I didn’t really wanna eat at home, but I wasn’t gonna say anything-- and then you just parked the car to eat, exactly how I wanted.”

“It’s ‘cause I know you,” Dennis says smugly, ignoring the pain he feels when his arm brushes past the center console. “I knew you’d want to eat in the parking lot. That’s why I did it.”

“Aw, really, Den? You are _such_ a good friend, man.”

“Thanks,” Dennis says, taking another bite of his burger. 

“And your hair looks really good, man, I wasn’t gonna say anything, but--”

Again, Dennis points innocent eyes at Mac. “Does it look better than Chase Utley’s?”

Mac freezes, a fry halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“I read your letter while we were trapped in the storage room.”

“Oh,” Mac says slowly. “You did?”

“Yep.” Dennis takes a long sip of his drink to build anticipation. “So do you think I have better hair than Chase Utley?”

“Totally, dude,” Mac says. “For sure.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.” He moves a little. A stab of pain in his ribs-- fuck. Maybe one of them is broken. He cringes against it, reminding himself to stop fucking moving so much.

“Does it still hurt, dude?”

“Yeah,” he says, sighing. “I’m never talking to Charlie again, bro. I swear.”

“That’s gonna be hard since we all work at the same place.”

“I’ll just ignore him,” Dennis insists, though he knows perfectly well that he won’t stick to it.

“We’ll just get him to apologize,” Mac says. “I’ll make him. He’s kind of backed into a corner here. He did push you in front of a car. The only thing he might do is use the time you broke both his legs as an excuse.”

“That was like three years ago,” Dennis dismisses. “I doubt he even remembers it.”

“Yeah, he might not,” Mac agrees.

“You know, it pisses me off that Dee kept saying shit about how I was exaggerating my injuries,” Dennis says, folding a fry in half to eat it in one bite. “She doesn’t know shit.”

“She’s just a dumb bird, how could she?”

Dennis laughs. “That’s true, man.”

“Anyway, my vision is just barely starting to come back from the pesticide toxic gas in Frank and Charlie’s apartment,” Mac adds. “Hers probably was bad too. She probably couldn’t see how bad the scrapes on your arm are.”

Dennis glances down at them. They do look pretty nasty. Feel pretty nasty, too. And they’re angry red, he notices.

“You think it’s infected?” He asks Mac.

“No, it’s only infected if it starts to go numb,” Mac explains. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

“Hurts like a bitch.”

“That’s good. That means it’s healing and it’s not infected.”

Dennis nods, crumpling up the food wrappers and stuffing them in the bag. “You ready to go home?”

“Yeah, man.”

+

“I gotta tell you, bro, these scrapes and bruises fucking hurt,” Dennis sighs as he wanders out of the bathroom, steam pouring out behind him, a towel wrapped around his waist. “The hot water just made it hurt worse.”

They look worse, too, he notices-- the hot water has reddened his skin, making the bruises look nastier and deeper purple in contrast. And the scrapes on his arm are freshly stinging from soap and hot water. 

Mac frowns. “Maybe we should get you to a doctor, man. Those bruises look really bad.”

“Nah, we don’t need to do that. I don’t want to deal with them. They’ll just be all judgmental and then they’ll charge me a thousand dollars for nothing.”

“Probably,” Mac agrees. His hair is still damp from showering too; it’s falling over his forehead a little bit. And, Dennis notices, he didn’t bother putting pants on-- not that walking around in just boxers is uncommon in the Reynolds-McDonald household. 

Dennis shifts his shoulder uncomfortably, cringing again. “Sure hurts, though, I’ll tell you.”

“Go lay down,” Mac suggests. “I’ll get you a cold pack and some aspirin.”

“Okay,” Dennis agrees, heading toward his room. He quickly dries himself off, being careful not to further agitate the scrapes on his arm and the bruises on his ribs, and puts on boxers and a tee shirt.

The whole thing was stupid, in retrospect. The jump-in-front-of-a-car scheme. The supposed tunnels at the Ollidy Inn. He never should have listened to Charlie on either count-- maybe, Dennis reasons, no one should ever listen to Charlie’s idiotic ideas ever again. He even regrets writing GO PHILS on his chest, since he had to scrub it off in the shower and it was written right over all his stupid jump-in-front-of-a-car scheme bruises. This whole thing, really, was a wash. They didn’t get into the game; they didn’t even get to watch the game on TV. The only perk was the whole thing about only eating peppermint candies for the couple days they were trapped in the storage room. He had to have lost at least a pound or two, he figures. Maybe that should be a thing. The peppermint candy cleanse diet. Maybe he should market that to people and make millions off it.

Mac knocks on his door, nudging it open with his elbow. He hands Dennis three Tylenol and a glass of water-- Dennis accepts them, even though they were likely marinating in Mac’s hand sweat. 

“Good,” Mac says once he’s swallowed the pills. “Now lay down, dude. Get comfy.”

Dennis does as Mac says, getting into his bed even though it’s only seven at night. Mac carefully nudges the duvet down to Dennis’ waist and places the ice pack (which is just a bunch of ice cubes Mac stuffed into a Ziplock bag) over the biggest bruise. 

“Thanks,” Dennis says, figuring Mac is finished-- but then Mac sits down on the side of the bed and starts dabbing Neosporin into the scrape on his arm with gentle fingers. Dennis watches him do it. Thinks about how this is the longest time they’ve gone without messing around since the beginning of this year-- and his first instinct is to rectify that immediately, but then he remembers the nasty bruises on his torso, and figures he probably wouldn’t even be able to enjoy sex since being shoved into the mattress would just agitate the bruising. He sighs.

“I know it hurts, dude,” Mac says. “Anything else I can do?”

“No,” Dennis says. Watches Mac put the cap on the Neosporin and pick up the empty glass. Watches him stand up and head toward the door, nothing but boxers and a tee shirt and dampened hair and three douchey tattoos. 

If he’s being honest with himself, Dennis almost wants to cold-shoulder Mac a little bit about the Chase Utley thing. He reminds himself it’s unlikely Mac will ever get to meet the guy, though. Reminds himself of the look Mac gets in his eyes if Dennis says something nice to him or kisses him or whatever. “...Unless you want to stick around and watch a movie in here?”

Mac grins a little bit. “Yeah. Sounds good. I’ll grab a couple beers.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me at golden-geese.tumblr.com! this is an anon request, which i do all the time, so feel free to drop yours in my ask :) also, i greatly appreciate every comment i get and i will always reply, so please leave one!! thank you for reading :)


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